


Sam's Guide To Enjoying the Dark Again

by Liara_90



Category: Blood Fest (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dorms, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Light Bondage, One Shot, POV Third Person, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Smut, Swearing, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 02:56:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15698703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: Following the events at Blood Fest, Sam and Dax reconnect in Dax's dorm room. Turns out Dax has a lingering fear of the dark, and Sam just might have the solution.





	Sam's Guide To Enjoying the Dark Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is silly, self-indulgent, fun. But maybe you’ll enjoy it, too :D

* * *

You know that old horror cliché where the main character is being chased by a monster, and right before they’re killed they wake up from the dream, only for them to _still be in mortal danger_?

Dax Conway startled awake, heart pounding, the sheets bunching as he instinctively curled his leg inwards. He was still disoriented - trying to remember where he was and what he was doing there - when he was able to make out a sound other than his own panicked breaths. The sound of footsteps coming down a hallway, closer and closer towards him. Barely daring to lean over the edge of his mattress, Dax watched, paralyzed, as a pair of feet blocked the crack of light beneath his door. He half-expected the door to start splintering inwards, Jack Nicholson-style, but the gentle tinkering of keys in the lock was so much worse.

 _Why couldn’t he move? Why was he_ trapped _?_

The key scraped along the metal of the lock for a second, before finally sliding in, the key’s teeth meshing smoothly with the pins of the lock. With an echous _clank_ the door’s bolt slid sideways, unlocked. With a deafening _creak_ , the door swung open. And then, with a horrifying-

- _click_

“Christ, Dax, it’s one in the afternoon, get out of bed,” Sam half-pleaded, half-groaned, flicking on the switch and bathing the dorm in harsh fluorescent line.

“ _Arrrrmmf_.” Dax let out an only vaguely-human grunt and rolled over, making a show of trying to fall asleep again. But Sam was right. He’d overslept, and his circadian rhythms were now so angry with him that he could barely keep his eyes closed.

Sam dumped her backpack on the floor, gracelessly, and proceeded to make a show of looking repulsed. She was no woman’s definition of a clean freak - truth be told she was naturally messier than Dax was, courtesy of his father’s strict upbringing - but this was the kind of things that freshmen boys were teased about, and she was happy to play the harpy.

“I blame time zones,” Dax replied, unconvincing, as he rolled back over in bed to look at Sam. She was dressed appropriately for the California summer - at least the tail end of it - in a tank top and shorts, her hair in its usual braids. And unlike Sam, she hadn’t been burnt to a crisp by the harsh sunlight of SoCal.

“A whopping _three whole time zones_ ,” Sam replied with a snort, twisting the wand of the blinds just enough to let in some light without compromising their privacy. Dax hissed like he’d been burned. “You a vampire, now?”

“Something like.” Dax sat up, running his fingers through his hair. “Though you didn’t have to come creeping into my room like a fucking ax murderer.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at the genuine distress in his voice, but Dax didn’t elaborate. So she just hopped onto the bed opposite Dax, legs dangling off the edge.

“How’s your roommate?” she asked, inquiring about the man whose sheets she was seated on.

“He’s fine,” Dax replied, indifferently. “Comp sci kid. Doesn’t really talk to me much.”

“ _Nerd_ ,” Sam teased, a small smile on her face. Though she was wordlessly grateful for his absence. For the first time since Frosh Week, she and Dax had a modicum of privacy. “Classes good?”

Dax shrugged. “Fine. Just the introductory lectures, no labs. You?”

“Same.” Sam had chosen her freshman courses pretty much at random, which had resulted in the usual mix of microeconomics, Psych 101 and underwater basket-weaving.

“It’s just weird for things to be…” Dax’s hands cast about “... _normal_. I’ve got my textbooks, my meal plan, my UCSD hoodie…”

“It was a pretty fucked up summer,” Sam agreed, grimly. She too had struggled with the return to some semblance of normalcy. After Blood Fest had, well, _exploded_ , it had been pretty much non-stop chaos for the rest of the season. Police, family, journalists, bloggers, truthers. And more funerals than any teenager should have attended...

Her words snapped Dax out of his trance, at least momentarily. “Hey uh…” he shuffled around “... there’s room in - _on_ , on - my bed.”

Sam sniffled loudly, before hopping off one bed and onto Dax’s. She was tearing up a little, and Dax hurried to drape his blanket around her shoulders, rocking her against him. “...I missed this,” Sam muttered.

And so did he. The worst part of the summer had been their separation. A freshly-minted orphan, Dax had been swept into the embrace of some distant relatives in the Old Dominion. More than anything, the loneliness had gotten to both of them. Their closest friends were scattered in an newly-designated Superfund site, and it wasn’t like Aunt Nora or Uncle Jim could relate to fighting for your life through a living hellscape.

Sam hadn’t been able to tell them that all she wanted to be was _right here_.

Dax tilted her head, oh-so-gently, until she was facing him, her cheeks flushed and red. They kissed. They’d actually gotten pretty good at that, in those few hectic days before their separation, Sam’s digs at teenage boys notwithstanding.

She let her eyes drift shut, melting against his mouth.

And then she felt his erection through his underwear.

“Hey there,” she said, snorting a little at the romantic anticlimax. This was the logical conclusion of the Disney movies that you never got to see. “Missed you, too.” She stroked the front of Dax’s boxers, enjoying the just-suppressed groan that her boyfriend stifled in his throat.

“Don’t tease,” Dax griped, as Sam nestled against him. He’d fallen asleep in an off-grey tee, which was still sticky with nightmare-induced sweat. Thankfully, Sam didn’t seem to mind. God knew she’d been soaked with worse. “I haven’t had twenty minutes to myself since my roommate showed up.” A man whose dedication to his _World of Warcraft_ guild was commendable, if nothing else.

“Who said I’m teasing?” Sam replied, pushing Dax flat against the mattress. The ceiling was unfamiliar, but the positioning wasn’t.

“Sex first thing in the morning,” Dax grinned, as Sam tugged his shirt off, “I could get used to this.”

“ _One in the afternoon_ ,” Sam repeated, even if it was closer to 2 now.

“ _Time zones_ -”

“-don’t work like that.”

Sam let out a sigh, lowering herself so that her chin was resting on Dax’s chest. He’d had little else to do in Virginia but go to the gym and go for jogs - a shrink had said that exercise was a good way of dealing with the grocery list of conditions he no doubt had - and Sam was not above appreciating the muscle tone he’d developed. But more importantly…

“You moved east-to-west. If anything, you should be awake at five in the morning,” she pointed out, her fingers playing across his pectorals. Dax tried to come up with a mollifying lie, but his brain failed him. “Trouble sleeping?”

Dax weaved his head noncommittally. “It’s hard getting used to a new bed, y’know?” he half-confirmed, half-evaded. At least it was true, UCSD didn’t exactly splurge on amenities.

Sam gave him a kiss, which turned into two kisses, which turned into a five-minute makeout session. Somewhere in those minutes Sam had shrugged out of most of her clothing, leaving her in just her bra and her panties, unsurprisingly mismatched. Dax’s finger rubbed her left shoulder, as if he was trying to smudge the tattoo there.

“I’ve been thinking about what I can do about that,” Sam mused, sliding herself up beside her boyfriend. “With your nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” Dax’s lie barely warranted a scowl.

“Dax, I’ve seen how late you’re up,” Sam replied. By which she meant that she’d seen his 3, 4, 5 AM posts on Facebook, his Tweets greeting the rising sun. “You’re scared of falling asleep. Of the dark.”

Dax sputtered. It was, he immediately knew, absolutely true. And yet somehow he’d never been able to put that thought into words. Maybe the most fundamental ingredient to _fear_ , and he’d somehow missed it.

“You get a psych degree while I was sleeping?” Dax asked. He’d meant it to be teasing, but it had come out a little harsher than he’d intended, skirting the edge of scornful.

Sam flinched, and Dax knew he’d fucked up.

“Sorry,” he hurriedly said, doing a good imitation of the Canadian national catchphrase. “You don’t… _I_ don’t…” He forced himself to sit upright. “You’re the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me, Sam. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have died like twenty times over in Blood Fest. You are _literally_ the most amazing woman I have ever had the sheer fucking luck to know.”

Sam was still a little drawn in on herself, but she did allow a small grin. “You’re goddamn right,” she replied, wrapping her hands around his neck so she could take another kiss. “Don’t ever fucking forget it.”

Her tone was serious, but Dax caught the warmth in it, the love and care and affection. She pushed him back down to the bed, between kisses, her hands on his thighs doing wonders for his blood flow.

“But seriously, what was this about curing my nightmares?” Dax asked, while the rest of his brain set about determining if he could reach the box of Trojans from his mattress.

Sam let her teeth dig into the muscle between his shoulder and neck, leaving little bite marks, like vampiric foreplay. “It’s simple,” she promised, rubbing her cheek against his. “Same thing that got us through Blood Fest. You have to be stronger than your fears.” Dax’s hand had found its way to her inner thigh, and her breaths quickened at his touch.

“The cure for nyctophobia?” Dax asked, innocently.

* * *

It was pitch black, and Dax was completely unable to move.

He also wasn’t thinking about dying and/or being killed, which was new.

“What can you see?” came Sam’s voice, speaking from somewhere behind him.

“...Nothing…” Dax replied, completely honestly.

“Can you run away?” Sam asked, this time closer, to his left.

Dax’s muscles strained, but he moved not an inch. “...No.”

“And how does that make you feel?” Sam finally asked, from directly in front of him, repeating those ancient words of psychotherapy.

Dax exhaled. “I am _so_ fucking hard right now.”

Though he couldn’t see it, Sam was grinning like a cheshire cat.

In the end, all it had taken was some duct tape, and a heavy wooden chair that had come with the dorm. Once she’d stripped him fully nude, Sam had taped his wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of the chair, coiling the roll of aluminium grey tape around his chest, and then blindfolding him with several more strips. As the finishing touch, she’d used his bike lock to tether the chair to the bedframe, meaning he couldn’t even shuffle it around the dorm room.

Sam seated herself atop Dax, and began kissing him. Dax was slightly clumsier blind, but only slightly. Her fingers sunk into his shoulders, nails leaving crescent imprints on his bare, exposed skin. She appreciated the position, the control it gave her, to take and take and _take_ as much as she wanted from his mouth. Sam still didn’t quite know the full spectrum of her sexual preferences, just how far from vanilla she could go....

...But she knew she liked the sight of a musclebound man, well, _bound_. And if it happened to double as psychotherapy... something something birds and stones…

They worked themselves sweaty, kissing and grinding. Sam clawed greedily, nails racking Dax’s skin on the threshold between pain and pleasure. If there was one shortcoming to this position, it was that Dax couldn’t use his hands to touch her, even as he oh-so-obviously strained against his restraints trying to. But for now, it was a sacrifice Sam was willing to make. 

“You feel almost as beautiful as you look,” Dax managed to get out, between gasping breaths.

Sam let out an unladylike snort. “Okay, no more Hallmark Movies for you,” she chided, doing her best to slide off her panties without leaving the chair. It was difficult - and she almost crushed Dax’s testicles twice in the process - but she succeeded. “That’s just too cheesy,” she said, as she stuffed her unmentionables into his mouth.

Then it was Dax’s turn to grin, clutching her panties by his teeth for a few seconds, before flinging them aside with a shake of his head. Sam furrowed her brow, distantly puzzled. Most guys she’d tried that on had been all over it. But she had more pressing issues at hand. 

Well, one issue pressing _into_ her hand, really.

Sam slid back on Dax’s lap just enough to get a good angle for stroking his dick. His respectably-but-not-painfully above-average penis was practically quivering in anticipation, solid as a rock. The pressure between Sam’s own legs was fast becoming intolerable, even though she’d had more than enough time to herself in her dorm that week.

She unrolled a condom down the shaft of his penis with practised ease, throwing the wrapper away without a care. Sam then raised herself up, straddling his crotch, letting the tip of his member _just_ brush against her folds.

Sam was not really the kind of girl who studied the sex tips in _Cosmo_ or used a toothbrush to train her gag reflex. She generally kept her sex straightforward, without all the carefully-choreographed cycles of foreplay, teasing, orgasm denial, or the tantric flavor of the month. But if the self-denial was straining _her_ limits…

...then Dax…

“Oh please…” he breathed, his tone close to a prayer “... oh my God, _please_ … you feel…”

Sam lowered herself a half-inch, ‘just the tip’, almost losing herself in the sensation. Holding the pose was murder on her calves and her thighs, to say nothing of her burning need for an orgasm. A desire that was rapidly encroaching on the bottommost layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But seeing the way Dax’s lips parted, his chest heaved, his facial muscles contorted…

...yeah it was worth it.

“You know…” Sam murmured, “...I can stop now, if you like.” She rose onto her toes, wincing at the sensation of _withdrawal_. “If you’re scared of what you can’t see in the dark.”

Dax did a reasonable impersonation of a man being garrotted. “Sam, you’re a goddamn miracle worker, I’m cured, now can we please please _pleeeeeaaaaa_ …”

The last few phonemes were lost as Sam lowered herself onto him, feeling the familiar pressure she had missed so much. Bound as he was Dax could barely thrust his hips, but Sam was doing most of the work, lust and passion pumping her into a frenzy.

Objectively, it was not the best position to fuck in. Sam had never done it on a chair before, and the angle was more than a little awkward. But she didn’t want to move - didn’t want to turn away from him - and they were both so fucking horny they could’ve been on disassembled IKEA furniture for all either of them would’ve noticed.

“ _Dax_ ,” Sam shouted, as she sunk her nails into his shoulders. The orgasm was a powerful one, raking her whole body, wordless cries escaping from her lips before she bit Dax once again, sinking into his neck before sucking at his skin.

Sam had sunk down the remainder of Dax, clenching tight, feeling his pulsing need finally reach release. Dax was quiet as he came, letting out only a few raspy breaths, but the relief on his face was unmistakable.

So too was the adoration.

Sam eased herself off her boyfriend, a process complicated by the fact that her legs had apparently turned to Jell-O, and her arms weren’t doing much better. She shuddered as she slid fully off of him, suddenly acutely aware of the cool sweat slicking her skin.

“ _Ow_ ,” Dax griped, as Sam ripped off the strips of tape that had served as his blindfold. “You know, I don’t think this is the kind of therapy my Dad would’ve approved of.”

Sam rolled her eyes as she stood up, taking a small, steadying step. After arching her back, therapeutically, she pulled the condom off of Dax’s dick, tossing the well-used rubber in the dorm’s small trash bin.

“Well, he was kind of insane, so who cares?” she replied, snatching a pair of scissors off of Dax’s desk. His erection softened as she snipped her way through the coils of tape binding him to the chair, and he felt exhausted despite having barely moved.

“ _There_ ,” declared Sam, snipping through the last of the tape at Dax’s ankle and tossing it aside. She was kneeling at the foot of the chair, and without conscious thought she pressed herself against Dax’s leg, feeling the gentle tickle of his short hairs on her face. Dax’s hand found its way to her head, gently petting her.

“You know, just because you’re my girlfriend, doesn’t mean it’s your job to fix all my mind problems,” Dax murmured, as Sam’s eyes drifted shut.

“I know,” she replied, her mind wandering away as she lost herself in the repetition of his touch.

“I pay, like, a _lot_ of money to real doctors for that.”

Sam smiled. Thanks to a book deal with HarperCollins, neither of them would have to worry about money anytime soon. And that was _before_ the Hollywood bidding war for the movie rights had kicked off.

She stood up, and Dax followed suit, taking her hands in his. They drifted closer together, into a small embrace, nude as the Garden of Eden.

“And even if it doesn’t work,” Sam said, feeling Dax’s hand slink around the small of her back, “it was fun try.”

Dax chuckled. “Yeah. You got any psych issues to work out, be sure to let me know.”

Sam grinned, and took a half-step back. “You don’t like the dark,” she began, spinning about to face away from him. She had, Dax never failed to notice, an exceptionally cute butt. “But I was stuck in that crazy _Saw_ trap.” Dax suppressed a grimace, his mind stumbling over unpleasant memories. “Totally helpless.”

Sam spread her arms, in a way that brought to Dax’s mind Fay Wray being sacrificed before Kong. And then she turned to face him, a wry little grin on her face. “I wonder if I’ll ever get over that feeling.”

Dax closed the gap between him and Sam. His hands found her wrists, encircling them, and he gently pushed her against the wall. She twisted a little, content in his grip, a familiar _need_ between her legs growing at a quickening pace.

“I think I can help with that,” Dax murmured, as he leaned in close, finding Sam’s hungry mouth with his.

The rest of the afternoon was spent confirming that belief.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw _[Blood Fest](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7208564/)_ during the August 14 [Fathom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathom_Events) screening, and if the existence of this fanfic doesn’t give it away, I _really_ enjoyed it. (My full review of it is [here](http://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/post/177014242068/blood-fest-2018)). I wrote the first draft of this the same night I saw it.
> 
> That said, my apologies in advance for any errors in the work. I only saw it once (obviously), so I’m relying on my memory of the narrative, dialogue, and dynamics, rather than obsessively re-watching for every minor tic like I usually do.
> 
> If there’s more interest in anything _Blood Fic_ related, feel free to shoot me your ideas. But I just needed to get something about these two out of my system.
> 
> And as always, thank you for your readership! Please feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, feedback, or headcanons in the comments. Criticism is the only way I’ll ever get better as a writer. If you’d like to know more about me/my writing, feel free to hit up my[About](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/about) page. I’m also active on both[reddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/pvoberstein/overview) and[Tumblr](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/), and can be reached through any of the means on my[Contact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/profile) page.


End file.
